While most kids stick to their home works, video games and sugar sticks, there are some young kids who have turned themselves into successful entrepreneurs at a very early age. After all they say, ‘It’s never too early to have good idea’ but only a few implement them in reality. Today the businesses of these young entrepreneurs are wildly successful with turnovers of million of dollars and branches across the globe.
1. Anshul Samar
Founder and CEO of Alchemist Empire Inc
Anshul Samar is another name for the connection between ‘high school’ and ‘chemical warfare’. This 13 years young lad came up with the idea to create a role playing card game based on chemistry, which is funny as well as educational. With this he made his unique mark in the gaming world with a trading game card called, ‘Elementeo’. In the game, you and your opponent are given a set of chemicals to destroy each other at their respective atomic levels. Elementeo is basically a brain storming game to make chemistry ‘fun’ for kids.
Though this young entrepreneur started this company recently, but started dreaming about this long back in his fourth grade. He wanted to build a chemistry based card game, but it took him years to develop all the quirks. This tenth grade CEO has impressively named his company as Alchemist Empire, Inc. His company is said to have hit $1 million in revenue in its first year of operation.
2. Sean Belnick
Founder and CEO of BizChair.com
At a tender age of 14, Sean Belnick spent $500 to build an online marketplace for office chairs. This site is known as BizChair.com, which is an internet retailer of office chairs, office furniture, restaurant furniture, church furniture, school furniture, home furniture, and medical furniture. The company is reported to have only 75 employees but provides more than 2,50,000 products. Belnick, at the age of 22, is said have a net worth of $42 million.
The e-tail site was ranked as no. 438 on the Inc. 500 list of Fastest Growing, Privately Held Companies in 2006 and ranked no. 272 in the Internet Retailer Magazine's top 500 in 2007. In 2008, it was ranked no. 37 in the Inc Magazine list of top 100 retail companies. You yourself can imagine the growth of this company.
3. Adam Horowitz
Adam Horowitz along with fellow classmates launched a terrifyingly popular nasty gossip blog when he was 15. Needless to say, his parents shut it down right quick. The experience taught him about the potential in internet marketing. So he started his own site known as Urban Stomp, which hosted music and also listed the party locations in his local area. He lived in the Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles. He sold clothing through affiliate sites to pull cash.
Horowitz was not ready about how successful it would be. His first listing, which was an accidental posting to the home of an 80-year old neighbor, drew over 700 rowdy teens. One can imagine the pain. But what started out as an awkward venture into the world of digital business has since been turned around.
Horowitz now teaches 15+ year olds, on how to make money online. He runs mobile marketing sites like ‘Mobile Monopoly,’ and ‘Cell Phone Treasure’. These both earns him over $100,000. Additionally, he has another one in planning, that is up and coming, ‘Dude, I Hate My Job!’
4. Leanna Archer
Founder and CEO of Leanna’s Hair
Leanna Archer started a line of hair and body products at the age of 9. She used these for her own, which is actually a mix of secret ingredient of her grand mother. When she got multiple compliments about her, she gave her friends a few samples of the pomade. Its only after this, the orders started pouring in.
Later Leanna convinced her parents to start it as business. She started researching on how to start a business online. She started her business in her basement but after sometime, her parents left their full time jobs to support her. In an interview to CNN, she said, “The most important thing a parent can do is stick by their kid and supports their dreams 100 percent... Dreams are wild, but they're wild enough to come true”.
5. Angelo Sotira
Founder and CEO of deviantArt
Angelo Sotira is an American Entrepreneur who co-founded an online community called deviantArt, along with Matthew Stephens and Scott Jarkoff, in 2000, when he was only 18. deviantArt is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork.
dA is a site where users can set up an account to show off and popularize their work. They can also sell prints of their work and buy sponsored merchandise. Within three years, it earned 100 submissions that is an average of 1,40,000 per day. It has more than 15 millions users.
For art lovers, flowery words, stroke of brushes, the strike of a chord, a camera click, anything and everything is an artwork. But with deviantArt, art came more near to them through few mouse clicks.
6. Abbey Fleck
One Saturday morning in 1991, 8 year old Abigail (Abbey) M. Fleck was making bacon with her dad. They ran out of paper towels, so her dad put it on the classified section of the newspaper. Mom was unhappy to see this and prompted dad, “I could just stand here and let it drip dry.”
In this small process of fun experimenting, Abbey invented Makin’ bacon. After all who doesn’t love crispy, tasty bacon? Today, Abbey’s Makin’ Bacon is the star attraction of Walmart, which costs less than $10. Abbey is now 27 and works with special children. She lives in Los Angeles and is married to a man who sells the 'Deflecktor', fuel-saving wheel covers for truck which is actually invented by her dad.
7. Cameron Johnson
Now 23, Cameron Johnson started his first business at the age of 9 that is even before he graduated from high school. In less than a year, he saved $50,000, which he preserves for his next project, My EZ Mail, which is an email forwarding company. It generated up to $3000 a month in advertising.
He then joined with two other teens, namely Aaron Greenspan and Tom Kho, to create an online advertising company, Surfingprizes.com. During his freshman year of high school that is at the age of 15 he used to receive checks between $300,000 and $400,000 a month. Before graduating from high school, his combined assets were worth over $1 million.
8. Fraser Doherty
Fraser Doherty, at 14, began making jam from fruit and juices, based on his grandma’s recipe, in of his parents’ kitchen. He used to sell these to friends and fellow churchgoers, but demand grew fast, which actually was outstripping his ability to produce.
Doherty’s jam has spread rapidly and virtually reached every grocery chain in the U.K. and Ireland, including Sainsbury, which is the biggest UK retailer. His product, SuperJam, comes in a wide range of unique flavors, including blueberry, blackcurrant, rhubarb and ginger.
He started this business with a loan of $9,000 from a bank. Now this product has multiplied and reached to 300 stores across U.K. by 2008, he had made assets worth $1-$2 million.
9. Seth Priebatsch
This idiosyncratic CEO didn’t start out rich, but his can-do spirit and obsession with success, has made him one of the hottest merchandise in the IT market.
SCVNGR’s ‘chief ninja’ (“because you never negotiate with ninjas”) became a unique hit with the eponymous smart phone app. SCVNGR’s ‘chief ninja’ is a software platform where, like a scavenger hunt, you complete tasks in certain real-life places. This might seem have more gut feeling than proof to succeed, but in a world where deskbound games like Farmville, Mafia Wars, Warcraft or Rift and Minecraft fill the market, there’s something to be said for a game where it forces you to go out and do something.
This geo-gaming technology platform SCVNGR had only 20 employees when Seth took the initiative to pursue it.
10. Juliette Brindak
Founder and CEO of MissOandFriends.com
At the age of 10, Juliette Brindak conceived her own website called ‘MissOandFriends.com’, a website entirely to gratify young females who aims to build up self esteem and positivity. This “Girls only’ website is among the top 10 websites worldwide, as per Amazon Alexa data. She is 23 now, but she became millionaire at 17 and within 2010, her company revenue grew up to $15 million.
Her site hosts a club called Miss o Moms, which offers informative and engaging information about children and families. This site is a safe place for young ladies to explore what it means to be a young woman. It’s a hang out for girls and has a virtual environment with friends and schoolmates and develops meaningful and fun relationships. Juliette Brindak was named among the “Top 50 Women Who Inspire Us,” by Self-Made Magazine in November, 2010.